


Chasing the Dragon

by alethes



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Action/Adventure, Crimes & Criminals, Dwarven Carta (Dragon Age), Gen, Lyrium, Recreational Drug Use, Red Lyrium, Therinfal Redoubt, canon divergen, small people doing big things and thinking big thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 04:10:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19077205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alethes/pseuds/alethes
Summary: It's the night before the Inquisition attempts to close the Breach, and Cadash takes a moment to reflect on her past actions with the Carta.NOTE: Some paraphrasing. Unsure about title, but it'll do for now. Also foggy on drug use in Thedas, so I'm taking some creative liberties with that. Minor canon divergence.





	Chasing the Dragon

She eased herself down onto the frozen planks of the ratty jetty that overlooked Haven's frozen lake, heart heavy as she reflected on the monstrosities inflicted in the wake of Therinfal. All those people... those ridiculous tin men. People really should watch what they eat, all the more if it comes from reinforced double-walled boxes...

Malika let out a weary huff, cutting the lie short as it formed in her head, and took another draw from the joint between her teeth. If there was one thing the Inquisition was good for, it was its easy supply of spindleweed and booze, a fresh bottle of which sat snug between her thighs as she worked the cork loose. She had seen the Fade for the first time in her grounded, reasonable, dwarfly existence and, Maker's hairy knuckles, but she needed a drink. Once more, the image of her doppelganger rose in her mind - as it was wont to do between all the fighting for her life and trundling through gore and guts - and it was all glowing eyes, sadistic grins, and far too much touching. _"You're curious... should I use that when I'm you?"_

She had looked upon that face as though it hadn't been a constant companion for the better part of three decades, its voice as foreign to her as the Stone she wasn't born to. Even now, after a week's trek down from that ill-fated fortress, Malika could feel it prickling at the edges of her mind as those bits of herself would slowly lick away into an emerald haze. Only the warmth of Compassion had kept her parts in as memories were fractured and frayed. 

A shudder trickled down her spine like ice water and she lifted the rolled joint just long enough to take a good long swallow of what was meant to be Flissa's strongest stock. It was not, and her hands still shook as she took another long drag of the cigarette. It was three parts gone now, lost to her anxieties, and Cadash was suddenly irrationally furious. Fuck the Fade, and demons, and spirits and all the Maker's atrocities if this is what it meant. Fuck whatever it was that burned that scar of light into her palm. Maybe some things were worth forgetting to lyrium sickness. 

As though to remind her, the mark flared, sending sharp shocks of energy up and down her arm and shoulder. The pain was blinding, and she shoved her fist in the snow, if only to numb it as an old memory came to her, unbidden. 

  
* * *

_Blood, terror, and freezing winds... Emprise du Lion was a shit hole without peer. It was a block of ice in the ass-end of nowhere. The four very hungry dragons that had settled into the ancient ruins nearby had all but sealed the fate of its one township, which was such a starving, wretched slice of human misery that Malika had lost interest for any sort of larcenous sport. Its wilder parts were no better, with a deep chill that never left her bones and winds by the hour that threatened to toss the little dwarf over its many steep cliffs._

_She turned her back to one such cold breeze and let another one of those lovely heart-stopping draconic screeches roll over her as she tried to light up a joint, the rest of her limbs coiled ineffectively into a duster that was made for warmer climes. But the biting chill was better than being down below where the red isana sang even to her muted surfacer senses._

_"Hell of a thing, huh," came the scratchy voice of her Carta mate, who had come to stand beside her, a hand held out to bum her cig. She took a deep draw and passed it over before shrinking deeper into her coat. That was all they did for a while, standing in silence - she, rubbing her arms to stay warm, he, puffing away - faced towards the ruins in the distance of an empire long forgotten, their backs to the reality of their combined existence._

_Lantos was the first to break the silence, "Varla wants to burn... them, s-something about limiting exposure." She wouldn’t have blamed him if his stuttering was from more than just the cold._

 _They had been following the scarlet veins for a week when Leske started rambling about songs, and dubiously trying to get people to eat things they shouldn't. The boy had a strange sense of humour, and everyone had thought it a jest until most of the crew turned up dead and stuffed with red. The casteless rat they had fished from the burrows, too green to properly hold a knife, fought with a ferocity that Malika was not prepared for. It wasn't until she gutted him from crotch to sternum that the runt would stop. They later found a small sliver in his back pocket, something he had squirrelled away from the insulated crates, whether by greed, or madness, she could not know and did not try to guess; let it never be said that those of the carta were above some petty theft._

_"That shit is nothing like lyrium," Lantos shook his head, voice cracking. He was always the softer of the two of them, "it drove the kid crazy! We can't take it back, Mal."_

_She shifted her gaze from the broken structures to look at him, distressed and harried as he wim and wamed about responsibility. A bit of Leske had made its way into his matted beard, and she wondered if she should pick it out for him. Lantos wasn't a fighter; his face, that had been about as soft as his hands, told her from the start all she needed to know about where he came from, and his kindness was lovely and novel. But she had fought tooth and nail for her place in the Carta and she wasn't going back empty handed._

_"Salroka," she chided, wiping a thumb over the spot of viscera, "that shit's gonna make us crazy rich."_

_The red stuff was strong. The Dasher was going to love it._

  
* * *

It started in her gut and welled up in her throat before spilling whiskey and gruel onto the quiet ice, could be there was a bit of guilt mixed in there too. 

Lyrium was good for business, red or blue; that should have been the end of it. Cadash had dealt enough in vice and weapons over the years to come to terms with personal responsibility in these things - In the end, what people did with a product was their own business. She was there to move the goods. That red lyrium had been both was nothing new and of little consequence to her or the trade. There was a demand and the Carta supplied, someone else would have if they did not. That was all there was to it, all that should be to it... But the look in Denam's eyes had mirrored the terror she saw in strange little Leske's frenzied gaze as he tore his comrades to pieces, and a part of her wondered if she had some hand in this madness.

Malika spat and wiped the last vestiges of her dignity from her lips before falling back onto the cold hard ground in defeat. Above her, the Breach still loomed, and her thoughts drifted to the spot on her palm where the pain had subsided to a dull menacing buzz. Solas had called it a Mark, while the faithful believed it to be a sign of Andraste's favour; but the Herald knew it to be her conscience, which always had it flaring in the most uncomfortable of ways. Errantly, she wondered how much their spymaster already knew of her life as a small-time smuggler in a larger network of criminal trickery, not that it mattered. They would try to close the Breach the next day, and chances were that it would be her last. In truth, Malika Cadash was no one, and the hole in the sky was beyond anything she had ever known. If she could help seal it, it would be enough.


End file.
